Elizabeth Bishop

While Someone Telephones

Wasted, wasted minutes that couldn’t be worse, 
minutes of a barbaric condescension. 
--Stare out the bathroom window at the fir-trees, 
at their dark needles, accretions to no purpose 
woodenly crystallized, and where two fireflies 
are only lost. 
Hear nothing but a train that goes by, must go by, like tension; 
nothing. And wait: 
maybe even now these minutes’ host 
emerges, some relaxed uncondescending stranger, 
the heart’s release. 
And while the fireflies 
are failing to illuminate these nightmare trees 
might they not be his green gay eyes.